The challenges faced and the role played by the Copts and other ethnic communities in Sudan during political and social changes in the late nineteenth century.

Abstract

The Turko-Egyptian invasion of Sudan in 1820 by Mohammad Ali was primarily to supply the Egyptian army with warrior fighters and gold to finance the military. As a result, his army occupied almost all the land of present Sudan. The first era of the Turkish occupation, which lasted until 1885, flourished with the trade of gold, ivory, Arabic gum, ostrich feathers and slavery. Moreover, Muhammad Ali’s army accompanied many of the Coptic clerks by mandate in his campaign with their families to regulate the occupying force’s income, besides other people from different nationalities. As a result, the Copt immigrants were the most significant number, and the nucleus of the Coptic presence in Sudan lasts to this day. Sudan was a land of opportunities for every fortune seeker. Most merchants came from Egypt, the Middle East and Europe; the Turko-Egyptian Government employed European military personnel to rule over several of Sudan’s provinces. However, the Egyptian rulers were the majority, and most had an unpleasant history of unjust and cruelty in the taxes collection in addition to their private business activities. This congested social atmosphere created public exasperation. It caused a widespread popular revolution that acquired its legality from historical and religious texts. However, the course was initially unmotivated by belief or religion; it was purely economic. As a result, extreme religious fanaticism prevailed in all community strata; it affected well-off people, government employees, foreigners and locals, and every religion differently. Although the social change severely impacted many foreigners and the religious in different ways, they did not suffer more than the others—it was less even. Their suffering was due to cultural differences rather than anything else. The political and social experience of Mahdism, with its positives and negatives, influenced Sudan’s political and social future for decades.